The short answer: it depends on four things
A Shopify website costs Shopify’s plan fee, plus your theme, plus your apps, plus the people who design and build it. The first three are fairly predictable. The last one is where quotes differ by a lot, because “a Shopify store” can mean a theme with your logo on it or a fully custom build with subscriptions and integrations.
Platform costs are small and predictable. Design and development is where the money goes, and where it’s worth asking exactly what’s included.
Shopify’s own fees
Shopify charges a monthly plan fee and a payment processing fee on each sale. Plan prices change, so check Shopify’s pricing page for today’s numbers rather than a blog post.
Most growing brands are fine on the standard plans. Shopify Plus makes sense when you need things like checkout customisation, B2B features or very high order volume. If nobody can name the Plus feature you need, you probably don’t need Plus yet.
Theme: free, premium or custom
- Free themes are well built and a fine start, but every other store has the same layout.
- Premium themes are a one-time purchase with more sections and features. Most stores I see are on one.
- Custom themes are designed around your products and buyers. They cost more up front and usually mean fewer apps, because features get built into the theme instead of bolted on.
A good middle path is a premium theme with custom sections for the pages that matter most: product pages and the homepage.
Apps: the monthly cost people forget
Reviews, subscriptions, bundles, upsells, popups. Each app is a small monthly fee, and each one adds code to your store. Ten apps can quietly cost more per year than the theme did, and slow every page down.
Once a year, list every app, what it costs and whether anyone still uses it. I usually find at least one that can go.
Design and development
This is the big variable. What changes the price:
- Number of templates: homepage, collection, product, about, landing pages.
- Custom sections versus theme defaults.
- Subscriptions and bundles, which need careful setup so nothing breaks at checkout.
- Integrations like Klaviyo, reviews, wholesale or an ERP.
- Copy and photography, if they need to be written or shot.
Ask any designer or agency for a list of templates and integrations in the quote. If it isn’t written down, it isn’t included.
Migration, content and SEO
Moving from WooCommerce or Squarespace means bringing products, customers and order history across, and mapping every old URL to its new one with a 301 redirect. Skip the redirect map and you can lose the Google rankings you spent years earning.
Product photos and descriptions are the other hidden cost. A beautiful theme can’t fix blurry photos.
Ongoing costs after launch
Plan for your Shopify plan, apps, an email platform like Klaviyo, and small changes through the year: seasonal banners, new products, a sale page. If your store is built with editable sections, most of those changes don’t need a developer.
How I quote a Shopify project
I look at your store and goals first, then send a fixed quote with the templates, apps and timeline written down. No hourly billing, so the number you see is the number you pay.
You can read more about how I quote, or tell me about your store and I’ll tell you roughly where it lands.
If someone quotes you without looking at your store, they’re quoting a template, not your project.
